I’ve noticed what might be a trend in some of the more postmodern (emergent, mega, whathaveyou) churches, but might be in the traditional churches as well. People who have been going to church for years, but haven’t made a decision about faith yet.

I was involved with a church plant for about 10 years and we had a few people who were in the worship center on Sunday mornings, participated in worship, prayer, small groups, community activities and so on, but had never identified themselves as Christ followers.

I started attending a new church about 6 months ago and found some striking similarities despite the more outward differences.

Size:
Old church = 75-100 on Sundays
New church = 1200-1400 on Sundays

Focus:
Both churches made a conscious and public decision to reach people who are searching.
Both consider small groups to be the way that community happens.
Both had an aggressive social justice program to meet local community needs.

Worship style:
Both churches have cool multi-media, multi-sensory, experiences on Sunday mornings.

Searching
Both churches have a minority population who consider themselves seeking, although they’ve been at that or other churches for years. My Uncle, in his mid 60’s, tells me that he’s been going to church for 25 years, and still considers himself a searcher. He’s not made a commitment to Christ either publicly or privately.

Intimate conversations with some have revealed that they like everything about church, but feel like they are struggling with the idea of “God”. This seems to go against the grain of everything I’ve learned about doing church in the past 15 years or so.

So what’s going on here?
Is the church failing them in some way?